I recently attended a high school reunion. It had been 20 years since the last one. The week before, I studied, on and off, my senior yearbook. I remembered a lot of my classmates, though I have rarely seen them since graduation. I studied the pictures of those I didn’t remember as well very carefully. Prepared, I attended the reunion.

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In McDonald v. City of Chicago, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in a 5-4 decision that the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms applies to state and local governments just as it does to the federal government. This ruling is hardly surprising in light of the Court’s decision two years ago in District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the Court found that the District of Columbia’s absolute ban on the possession of handguns (similar to what Chicago’s ordinance did) violated the Second Amendment.

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The definition of insubordination is sometimes elusive. Everyone seems to agree that insubordination can result in a discharge. The question that causes disagreement is whether whatever the conduct in question is actually constitutes insubordination. I’m not in a position to judge what kind of job General Stanley McChrystal has been doing in Afghanistan, but I feel certain that what he said and did as reported in Rolling Stone amounts to insubordination. President Obama didn’t have to fire McChrystal, but he’s absolutely justified in doing so from an employment law standpoint. Employers who struggle with the meaning of insubordination should file this incident away as a good example of the offense.

A few days ago, I did a post on the brief Elena Kagan filed as Solicitor General in the case of City of Ontario v. Quon. The U.S. Supreme Court has now decided this case, and its unanimous decision sides with the argument Kagan made in her brief. As  you may recall, this is the only brief filed by Kagan as Solicitor General supporting an employer’s position.

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A closely watched case before the Supreme Court right now is City of Ontario v. Quon. The case deals with the question of how far a government employer can go in monitoring an employee’s email. The case was argued before the Court two months ago. This case gives the Supreme Court its first opportunity to address head-on an issue that’s increasingly a point of conflict in the workplace. Moreover, most employers have some type of Internet usage policy that permits the monitoring of employee email.

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Recently, I had a post wondering whether it was time to stop performance reviews. Then, I had a post making the case for stopping performance reviews. While reactions to such notions are always interesting, it’s quite unlikely that performance reviews are going away. This week’s tip: If you’re going to keep them (and I suspect most of you will), then at least evaluate the manner in which your supervisors do the evaluations. Part of the review of a supervisor should be how he or she evaluates subordinate employees. If you don’t do this, that’s another reason for the serious consideration of putting performance evaluations on the shelf to stay.

Under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), it’s well settled that the administrator of a benefits plan governed by ERISA is entitled to significant deference in making decisions concerning the plan, unless a decision by the administrator is found to be arbitrary and capricious. In Conkright v. Frommert, the Xerox Corporation changed its pension plan. The plan administrator interpreted the changes, and this decision was challenged.

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I understand that the recent movie Robin Hood is nothing like the legend or TV show with which some of us grew up. It covers a period before Robin Hood became the legend. I doubt that I’ll see the movie, but I watched the TV show religiously when I was a kid. It’s the ethics underlying the legend I ask you to consider.

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The Department of Labor’s Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS) has issued a final rule implementing Executive Order 13496. The new regs take effect on June 21, 2010. They require federal agencies to include contract language in agreements requiring their contractors and subcontractors to : (1) post a notice informing employees of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act; and (2) include similar requirements in their subcontracts. Check out a summary of these new regs provided by Miller & Martin, which includes links to various documents you should review and other information.

As reported in the WSJ Law Blog (which links to other news reports about this matter), drug maker Novartis has been hit with a verdict of $37 million in compensatory damages and another verdict of $250 million in punitive damages. The company was found guilty of sex discrimination in denying female employees, particularly pregnant employees, the same pay as comparable male employees, opportunities for promotions and more. It’s possible that Novartis could be hit with additional damages. This may be the largest jury verdict ever in an employment case.

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It’s not deadly, but in New York City, spitting on a bus driver is an assault — at least under the contract between the Transport Workers Union Local 100 and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. It’s also commonly called “aisle rage”: a resentment toward declining mass transit. In 2009, 51 spat-upon bus drivers took, on average, 64 days of paid time off after the spitting incidents. A total of 80 drivers were spat upon in 2009, which means that 21 of them took no time off. Being off 64 days is the equivalent of three months with pay.

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As previously noted (here and here), the controversy surrounding Richard Blumenthal’s run for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut provides the basis for considering what employers are sometimes faced with considering: resume fraud. It doesn’t appear that the controversy will end soon, so maybe more lessons about the subject are yet to come. Blumenthal did receive his party’s nomination this past weekend.

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A male professor at the University of Cork in Ireland has been disciplined with two years of intensive monitoring and counseling after discussing a scientific paper with a female colleague. The paper titled “Fellatio in fruit bats prolongs copulation” offended the female professor, who was also given a copy. She claimed sexual harassment. Though an investigation found that no sexual harassment had occurred, the university’s president censured the male professor by imposing the two-year discipline, which has the effect of preventing the male professor from obtaining tenure.

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A Staten Island middle school teacher was suspended after eighth graders used vulgar words during a state-mandated lesson on behaviors that can transmit H.I.V./AIDS. The 26-year veteran teacher with an unblemished record wrote polite words for sexual organs, sexual acts and bodily fluids on the board in the classroom. She then asked students to supply terms they knew for those same things. Students provided bad words, took them home, shocked their parents, and caused the principal to suspend the teacher.

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An earlier post advised that new help is on the way for employers struggling with dress codes and employees struggling to comply. The Prep is still in the works, but it’s already having an impact. According to the New York Times, khaki pants are making a comeback as part of workplace dress. They are well on the way to replacing various kinds of denim  pants, which should never have been allowed in the workplace to begin with. But I digress.

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A Hooters waitress in Michigan claims that she’s been put on probation and told to lose weight if she wants to keep her job. The server, standing five feet, eight inches, and weighing 132 pounds, says she’s devastated and looking for a lawyer. Hooters says it imposes no weight restriction on its employees. “Our practice of upholding an image standard based on appearance, attitude and fitness for Hooters girls is both legal and fair. It is not unlike the standard used by the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders or the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes.”

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In a post yesterday, I used the current controversy surrounding Richard Blumenthal, candidate for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut, to consider the issue of resume fraud sometimes confronted by employers. He’s accused of lying about his military record, though his situation is strange. More times than not, he told the truth. At times, it seems he didn’t. This situation as applied to the workplace deserves further consideration.

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Playing out in the theater of politics right now is an issue that sometimes plays out in the workplace. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, a candidate for the U.S. Senate, has said different things about his military record and is being accused of resume fraud. He served in the military. He didn’t serve in Viet Nam. Sometimes, he’s said his military service didn’t include Viet Nam. Increasingly, however, he’s referred to his service in Viet Nam.

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In the New York Times article referenced in my immediately preceding post, the new research on performance reviews spills over into the subject of proper supervision in the workplace. Most employment lawsuits have a supervisor or manager at their center. That doesn’t always mean that the supervisor has done something wrong, but many times, it means exactly that. Although HR generally shepherds the performance review process, supervisors and managers make the process work — or not. If a performance review is completed by a bad supervisor, it’s much more likely to get you in trouble than serve any useful purpose.

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Recently, I did a post wondering if it’s time to stop performance reviews at work. New research reported by the New York Times suggests that there’s no reason to wonder. They must be stopped — for the sake of worker efficiency, satisfaction and health. According to this research, it’s not just that performance reviews are ineffective and create the basis for employment lawsuits, they’re killing people.

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